


And Many Happy Returns

by nicKnack22



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Birthday, Brothers, Domestic, Epic Friendship, F/M, Family, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memories, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-10
Updated: 2013-06-10
Packaged: 2017-12-14 11:57:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/836620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicKnack22/pseuds/nicKnack22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's never been a big fan of birthdays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Many Happy Returns

You’ve never been a big fan of birthdays. No, really; it’s not really that surprising all things considered. When your mom dies on the day you turn six months old, you’d think, hey, this is it, we’ve reached the low point early—peaked, as it were, in the field of birthday trauma. So, really, it can only go up from here. Except, well, that’s not really how it works. That’s not your life, is it? Cause when you turn twenty-three, you’re fighting to stay alive at a demonic survivor boot camp before literally being stabbed in the back—spinal cord severed clean in half—and the last thing you see is the desperate, broken look on your brother’s face before your vision goes black at the edges and you die. 

You’re never sure what happens to your soul after that, but your body spends the rest of the day on a bed in some ramshackle cabin slowly rotting. 

You don’t realize how much of a miracle it is when you wake up. You’re too busy trying to close the Devil’s Gate, and getting revenge. It’s not until Dean finally kills Yellow Eyes that you find out that you died, actually died, and that the only reason you’re walking and talking right now is because Dean brought you back. The price tag…the price tag was too high. You’ve got one year. That’s it…and it’s not enough.

At this point, you realize, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you’re cursed. The taste of it is bitter—ash in your mouth. 

You turn twenty-four, and you’re panicked, desperate, helpless. You watch Dean get ripped to pieces—blood and gore and screams. You can’t stop it. Can’t do anything but struggle against invisible restraints and cry out for help that won’t come. Part of you hopes that Lilith will take you out too. Just end it. But then she can’t and, for the barest moment, rage trumps grief, boiling through your veins like hell fire, and she flees, unnerved and vulnerable, before you get the chance to end her. All you’re left with is the bloody shell of a brother. You clean him up and ignore the wetness on your face as you dig a grave against Bobby’s wishes. You bury Dean. You promise him you’ll find a way to fix this, and you slip his amulet around your neck, still tacky with his blood, and you’re alone…

Twenty-six is, of course, the best of all your birthdays. You aren’t even yourself for that one. You’re Lucifer’s prom tux and you’re screaming even though your face is smiling a creepy smile that is not your own. You’re fighting tooth and nail—railing against your own skull, trapped and tethered and tamped down—because this isn’t how it’s supposed to happen. And Dean—Dean needs you and you think, desperately, no, I can’t kill my big brother even as you feel your own fist connect again and again with his face—feel your hand shatter his cheekbone and rupture his eye socket and leave him concussed and broken and bloody. Lucifer is about to deliver a killing blow and you feel his joy at the same time you feel your own anguish and desperation. Dean is reaching out to you, face a bloody pulp, and he’s promising you that he’s here, no matter what, and you’re crying because of how stupid that is, because he should run….he needs to run, you can’t stop this, and you can’t do this. But your big brother is an idiot and he stays and reflected sunlight catches your eye and for a moment, just a moment, you beat the Devil. You look at Dean before you jump, because that’s all you have time for, and darkness swallows you whole. 

By this point in your life, you’ve come to the foregone conclusion that your birthday is basically an open invitation for death and disaster. It’s a cursed date and it would be safer for the universe as a collective if, by some miracle, it was wiped from the map. Obviously, you’re not that lucky and you’re relatively positive that the best course of action, in lieu of a complete revamp of the Gregorian calendar, is to batten down the hatches and hide out until it passes. Discretion, in this particular situation, being the better part of valor, it might actually save lives or the planet or both.

Of course, your brother (as previously mentioned) is an idiot and a glutton for punishment, so on the day you turn thirty-one, he ignores all the portents and life experience at his disposal, and overlooking your birthday is not what happens. No, what happens is that Dean rolls into the War Room (he insists on the capitalization) at eight thirty in the morning with a fucking carafe of coffee and a stack of waffles, and you blink at the display, relatively certain that you’re hallucinating

“There’s the birthday boy,” he greats with a devil may care grin, and you glare with enough force to turn a mere mortal into a smoldering pile of ash, but Dean, well, he only looks slightly mollified, for about a second, and it’s just really unfair. 

You put down the Roman manuscript you’ve been reading with a sigh, marking your place, ready to unleash the full force of your frustration, annoyance, and wrath. Your brother, however, is wily, and he fucking conjures Cas seemingly out of nowhere with a fruit platter and a pitcher of orange juice and—did they rehearse this? Seriously?—he sets them on the table in front of you without preamble of fuss. 

The fruit, you notice, has been meticulously sliced and arranged in the shape of a flower. Dean beams, and Cas says, “I did this myself to honor the day of your birth,” and you’re nonplussed; defeated by a plate of fruit and a pair of puppy eyes that you know he learned from you. Damn it. Dean smirks as if to say “That’s right; you can’t resist my angel’s puppy eyes. See how much you like it, Sammy. My master plan is working perfectly. I’m awesome.”

You glare in the face of his hubris. Dean put Cas up to this, Dean is playing you like a fiddle, and you know that you’re too old for it (thirty-one is too old, right?), but you would feel so much better if you snuck pink hair die into his shampoo bottle or just clocked him in the jaw. 

Instead, you remind yourself that you are a grown-up—apparently the only one around here—and you sigh with all the strength of a gale force wind and you eat a piece of strawberry to placate Cas. Dean grins broadly, jubilant, popping a blueberry into his mouth, winking at Cas and plunking the waffles in front of you. Cas smiles proudly as he joins you at the table. 

“This is it though,” you tell them firmly, glaring at them both, “Breakfast, but nothing else, okay?”

No one responds. You scowl, “Okay?”

“Sure, yeah,” Dean affirms with a lopsided smile and exaggerated eyebrows, like he’s trying to con you at a game of pool; he winks conspiratorially at Cas, “Nothing big, Sammy.”

Cas taps his nose, sagely, knowingly, and you have a moment to wonder, somewhat startled, where the hell he learned that gesture before you return to glowering at your brother. 

“Dean,” you hiss forebodingly, but then there’s a knock at the door of the bunker. Dean says, “Saved by the bell,” even though they don’t have a doorbell, which, right on cue, Cas confirms with a frown, “We don’t have a bell.” 

Dean chortles, giving Cas that mushy, adoring glance that would be vaguely nauseating if it weren’t so awesome. 

Kevin blunders in as Dean leaves. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he yawns. 

“Smelled waffles,” he mumbles blearily, “Happy Birthday, Sam.” 

He spears a waffle onto his plate, dousing it liberally in syrup. Cas passes him a cup of coffee, which he accepts like a sacred covenant. You glare suspiciously at them both, unease mounting. When Dean comes back in, Charlie in tow, you’re relatively certain that you have every right to pitch a shit fit, thirty-one or not.

You’re opening your mouth to let loose on your brother, when Charlie drops a stack of board games onto the table, waves at Kevin, kisses Cas’ cheek, and intercepts you. She almost tackles you, to be quite honest, in a hug, and your jaw snaps shut without the conscious effort of closing it. 

“Happy Birthday, Gigantor,” she greets with a huge smile and bright eyes. 

“Um, thanks, Charlie,” you sputter, uncertainly patting her on the back, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but, ah, what are you doing here?”

She pulls back, hands on her hips, and glances between Dean and Cas before leveling you with a ‘well duh’ expression. 

“I wasn’t’ going to miss the big 3-1,” she declares as if that’s the most obvious thing in all the world, and you find yourself strangely cowed by the declaration of affection. 

You’re going to kill Dean, you decide. Dean knows it, but he doesn’t even have the decency to look abashed. At all. Your brother is an asshole. 

He shrugs and says, “It’s just family, c’mon, man.”

Right on cue, Cas, Charlie, and Kevin turn and level you with synchronized puppy eyes. It’s overwhelming, and you never did do well with displays of affection from others. Fuck this. You slam your book shut; sigh so they know how pissed you are and say, “Fine,” in the most long suffering voice you possess. 

Dean is way too pleased with himself, “Atta boy, Sammy,” he practically crows. 

That’s how you end up sandwiched between Charlie and Cas on the sofa, spending the afternoon watching movies and playing games and waiting for someone to spontaneously burst into flames (because that’s probably the most mild catastrophe that you can hope for today). 

Instead, Cas and Kevin go toe to toe in a Scrabble match that actually gives you a few new vocabulary words. Dean is a super ridiculous cheering section and Charlie is the ref and you’ve never seen a game of Scrabble in which the audience was more invested than the players. Charlie kicks everyone’s ass in Trivial Pursuit (although Dean maintains that he let her win). You and your brother have a Monopoly death match. Cranium leaves everyone a little bruised and blood-spattered. Charlie and Dean are, by the end of the afternoon, forbidden from being teammates in the future because they really disturbingly seem to share a brain and that’s an unfair advantage (“don’t be jealous because we’re awesome” they say in unison and devolve in hysterics, having effectively proved everyone else’s point). 

Garth shows up in the later afternoon and Jody fusses over you when she arrives shortly thereafter. She and Dean tag team cooking dinner, which they eat in the TV Room, while Charlie presides, Master of Ceremonies style, over the ongoing Star Wars marathon. 

The food, you have to admit, is delicious. Melt in your mouth, foodgasm inducing delicious. The company, well, it’s not bad either. You eat another bit of Mandarin couscous, while Kevin and Charlie have an ongoing debate about intergalactic politics, and Dean whispers dirty thing into Cas’ ear (you assume as much from Cas’ reddened cheeks and twitching mouth). Jody absently swats at Dean’s head (like she has a sixth sense for when he’s being an idiot—a trait that she and Sam apparently share), as she attempts to discuss Memorial Day plans with Cas. Garth is in the middle of a rollicking tale of a Wendigo hunt in the Upper Peninsula, and Dean laughs appreciatively. You feel weirdly warm and relaxed, and the laughter and conversation makes you almost forget to worry about a Hell mouth swallowing everyone up. 

Dean baked a cake, “Double chocolate fudge,” he declares with a self-satisfied nod, like he shares a dirty secret with the desert. Cas carries it in. He was apparently the one responsible for decorating it—you can tell by the fact that it’s covered in a solid inch of icing and the edges are bedecked with luridly colored and vaguely lopsided flowers, interspersed with Enochian sigils. You recognize the signs for health, happiness, prosperity, and strength, which is absurdly sweet and makes up for the message in the center, written in English, that reads “Felicitations on Having Survived another Year of Life.”

“Uh,” you say as Cas beings to meticulously light thirty-one candles. 

“I thought we agreed on ‘Happy Birthday?’” Dean prompts, exasperation warring with fondness and culminating in an eye roll. 

Cas shakes his head at him an in ‘I obviously know better than you’ sort of way and declares that “You decided on ‘Happy Birthday.’ This statement is more apt for the occasion.” 

Dean just blinks. Jody snorts coffee up her nose. Charlie almost falls off her chair, and you laugh so hard that there are actual tears streaming from your eyes, and Kevin has to pat you on the back, while Garth giggles madly. Cas doesn’t get what’s so funny, but Dean sighs, chuckles, and slings an arm around his shoulders. He rolls his eyes, kisses Cas’ hairline, “Don’t ever change.”

They sing ‘Happy Birthday’ with varying degrees of enthusiasm and skill, and Jody says make a wish, and they’re watching you expectantly. 

You take a deep breath, and for the first time in years you remember your sixth birthday. Dean took you to the beach in Delaware and helped you build a sandcastle and catch hermit crabs. You ate these amazing burgers from some seaside shack. You had ketchup on your face and sand between your toes, and Dean got you chocolate cake with chocolate icing and sang ‘Happy Birthday to You’ off key and squeaky, and you were happy. 

You remember turning nine in Philadelphia. Dean took you to the Franklin Institute even though he claimed that it was lame because you’d been prattling on about it and so excited for weeks. You got cheesesteaks and raced up the steps the art museum while Dean hummed the Rocky theme song and you laughed at his singing till he had no choice but to pull you in a headlock and ruffle your hair mercilessly. You were still laughing and shoving each other when you ran down the steps. You sang this time. 

You remember your fourteenth birthday. Dad was passed out, drunk, and you were so mad at him. He didn’t even remember what day it was. What kind of shitty parent does that? But then Dean steered you out of the motel and you sulked and grumbled until he tossed you the keys in the parking lot. 

“Are you serious?” your voice cracked, and Dean grinned.

“Today you become a man, Sammy.”

You were nervous and excited and thrilled at the rebellion and “What about dad?”

For once, Dean waved it off, “What Dad doesn’t know won’t hurt him. You coming or what?” 

He taught you how to drive, and you forgot about Dad, basking in the warmth of Dean’s proud smile and the way that he ruffled your hair and let you pick the music for once, rolling down the windows and laughing. 

You remember turning seventeen. Dean gave you a new messenger bag—canvassed and waxed, heavy duty, grown up, expensive. There was a notebook inside—one of those moleskin professorial ones that you always imagined famous authors using in European cafes and archeological digs. Neither of you said anything because there was nothing to say and there was a lump in your throat. Dean wasn’t really giving you a notebook and a backpack, he was giving you his blessing—for Stanford, and that was one hell of a birthday present.

You spent your twentieth birthday with Jess. You told her not to make a big deal about it, but you came home from class to find her baking four dozen cupcakes. 

“How is this not making a big deal about it?”

“Shut up, birthday boy,” she said with a sassy smile, flinging frosting at your nose. You laughed, startled. 

You had a frosting war and made love on the kitchen floor and you were sure that there was no way you could ever have a better birthday. 

When you turned twenty-nine you were with Amelia. Dean was dead and so was Cas. To this day, you still aren’t sure how she even knew that tit was your birthday, but then, Amelia was perceptive and determined. She had a surprise picnic and the two of you played with Dog in the park. Talking about nothing, eating cake, licking icing off of one another’s fingers, and you felt strangely happy for the first time in what felt like years. 

And now, well, now you’re thirty-one. Jody stops production before you can make your wish, and adds an extra candle (‘for luck” and there’s a collective nod as if to say, ‘we’ll take all we can get’). Charlie is smiling, and Kevin grins widely—looking his age for once. Garth punches you affectionately on the shoulder (“Birthday punches, they’re lucky, too”). Dean still has an arm around Cas’ shoulders. Cas looks solemn, but when he catches your gaze, his lips quirk upward and his eyes crinkle with warmth. Your brother looks happy and you share a look. Dean grins crookedly. 

“Make a wish, Sammy,” he directs. Despite yourself, you smile at your family—because that’s what they are—as they watch you blow out all thirty-two candles in one breath. Everyone cheers and dives into the cake and there’s a scuffle over plates and napkins and everyone is probably in danger of a sugar coma, but you’ve got your wish. This is it.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no apologies for this. I'm not really sure what exactly happened. There are a lot of birthdays coming up: friends, family, mine in a little under two months. I'm just having a bunch of feels. And poor, darling, Sammy, he got to ride the feels train with me. I hope you enjoyed. No idea why the hell it's in the second person. That's weird.


End file.
